License to Pimp: A Conversation with Filmmaker Hima B.

What would you do if the strip club you worked at became a brothel? That’s the question Hima B. asks in License to Pimp, the feature documentary she is currently raising funds to complete. The controversial premise is that, by charging house fees, strip club are essentially pimping out the dancers, leaving them little choice but to become prostitutes in order to pay the house and make some money for themselves. License to Pimp follows the stories of three San Francisco dancers as they negotiate the changes in their workplaces and respond in three very different ways.

I was excited to hear about Hima’s film, but I also had some tough questions for her. Although she and I have many things in common—we’re both former strippers who share a hatred of house fees, and we’ve both been fired from clubs for trying to fight labor violations—we haven’t always seen eye to eye. So I figured it was time we sat down and had a proper conversation.

I agree with you that house fees add a huge economic incentive for dancers to turn to prostitution, but there has always been an overlap between stripping and prostitution. The premise that house fees “turned strip clubs into brothels” doesn’t take into account the dancers who would be working as prostitutes anyway. I also think the idea that dancers shouldn’t be “doing extras” in strip clubs is unrealistic, and it prioritizes the needs of the more privileged women in the industry—those who can afford not to turn to prostitution.

I think we disagree on that matter. I started working in 1992, and for the first three years you’d hear about dancers who were prostitutes, but they would leave with the customers instead of having sex in the club. Then the stage fees started going up. At first it was pretty gradual—the fees went from $5 to $25 over about five months. It went from being fully clothed lap dancing where they can’t touch your boobs to, OK, they can touch your boobs, to, now you can get fully naked. And then the stage fees spiked. I distinctly remember it went from $25 to $200 in one day at the Market Street Cinema, and when that happened it was no longer about lap dances. It became survival of the fittest.

And I agree with you, at first the women turning tricks were less attractive, not as young, more women of color, the junkies—those were the people who were initially feeling pinched to do it. It’s the super hot blonde who might get twenty customers vs. the woman of color who might get five. Women with these disadvantages are going to offer a lot more for a lot less. It’s the unfortunate inequality of the industry. But when you have a club where everyone is paying $500, there’s no way that any of those women are just doing lap dances.

You argue that dancers should be classified as employees, rather than independent contractors, because as employees they have so many more rights and the clubs aren’t allowed to charge them house fees. But I’ve heard that, in clubs where dancers are classified as employees, the dancers aren’t entitled to keep the money they make selling lap dances. That sounds like a pretty big deal, considering most dancers make the majority of their income selling dances.

That system—the so-called “piece rate” system—is also illegal, and I agree that it’s totally whack, especially when the clubs use it in a way that parallels a sweatshop system. The money that dancers make selling lap dances should be classified as tips. When a customer pays a dancer $20 for a lap dance, he thinks he’s giving her a tip. But the clubs have figured out ways to break down that whole tip thing, because when it’s a tip it can never be the club’s property.

In San Francisco there were several clubs that started using the “piece rate” system after they were forced to recognize dancers as employees. They give each dancer a quota of, say, ten dances, that they have to do by the end of the night, and they decide on the percentage the house gets. Then they create a barrier between the dancers and their customers. They have a machine, like a vending machine in a Laundromat, and each girl is given an electronic key. The machine registers that this dancer named Cindy is now doing her fifth dance that she’s paying for. So before, the dancers were able to say, “[the customer] gave me this money, he put it in my hand,” but now the club says, “the customer’s putting it into this machine that’s owned by the management.”

At three clubs in San Francisco there were class actions on the “piece rate” system, and the clubs lost all of them. The clubs are just trying to bide their time and make as much money as possible before the next class action.

If all clubs were legally required to classify dancers as employees, what would happen to all the women who dance because they need to be working off the books—undocumented immigrants, women receiving public assistance, women already working two or three other jobs, who just go into the club to make a bit extra when rent is due?

That’s part of the problem. What happens to the workers who are even more marginalized? But does that mean that the majority of women who do have legal rights should lose their rights and be denied wages? What’s the percentage of women who are undocumented? And then, when you talk about women getting government benefits, it gets into a complicated area because they’re committing fraud on a certain level.

But I worked in a club with a lot of undocumented immigrants, and when the club was mandated to recognize them as employees they didn’t go away. They got fake IDs and they stayed. And even undocumented workers are still protected under labor law.

In your response to my article, where I suggested that being an independent contractor stripper doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, you argued that, legally, dancers can’t truly be independent contractors. I see what you’re saying, but I also think it’s not just a case of following the letter of the law—it’s a case of figuring out what actually works for most dancers. If a club is charging a small fee and giving dancers lots of freedom to make their own schedules and generally treating them well, and if the dancers prefer that to being classified as employees, does it matter if it’s technically illegal?

I’m going to say it again: dancers are employees. The way the clubs are set up, they’re always going to be employees. What the women want is the flexibility to schedule when they come in. But the clubs could give them this flexibility if they wanted. They could set it up like a temp agency where you can say, “I don’t want to work this month,” or “I want to work this month.” Clubs could do that if they wanted, but they choose not to.

So what’s the solution? If the clubs continue to find ways to exploit dancers, even when they’re forced to recognize them as employees, how are we ever going to improve the situation?

In a lot of the class action lawsuits, the lawyers just want a big paycheck—they’re not interested in enforcing the law. When you settle, you don’t set a precedent with the case. There’s no legal binding on the clubs to change their practices.

Also, most dancers don’t file complaints while they’re still working, because of the horrible reality that they will get fired. I understand that. My ass got fired from every club I worked at. It’s hard to stand up unless you have some kind of privilege, like you know you could get hired in some other job outside the industry. But we need to get some solidarity on the stage fees. No dancer wants to pay to work, but until every one of those women stands up and says, this is wrong, it’s not going to change.

But that’s never going to happen, for all the reasons you just mentioned.

One of the hopes I have with my film is that, when dancers see it and understand that this is seriously illegal, and you can recuperate all your wages, something might click. When they start to see how much money is actually owed, and how they’ve been screwed over. I worked at this one club for less than a year and they owed me $30,000, and the stage fees there weren’t even that high. I got all of it back. At what point are these women going to stand up and say, no more?

There are no easy answers when it comes to labor rights and the strip club industry. Although I don’t agree with Hima about everything, I backed her film on Kickstarter because I want more people to know about these issues, and I think the film looks pretty great. You can find out more and support the project here.

Rachel Aimee is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She co-founded $pread Magazine, where she worked as editor-in-chief for four and a half years. She was a stripper for many years and continues to organize for strippers’ rights via the outreach project We Are Dancers. Find more of her work at rachelaimee.com.

14 COMMENTS

questions: hima, it sounds like you got hired, you sued, and were fired at numerous clubs. am i understanding correctly? were all your lawsuits successful in your favor? did you settle or did you litigate through to a court decision to set precedent?

I got hired. I worked. I paid to work. I got fired because of organizing efforts. I filed wage complaints. They’re technically not lawsuits but carry equal weight to one. Legal precedents were set with nearly all (1 settled in 1 case). Please check my blog for info on other dancers who filed siimilar wage complaints or were involved in class actions: http://licensetopimp.wordpress.com/

I’m a dancer who pays house fees every time I work. I know fees to work are not legal or moral. I understand Hima’s argument and I think it’s an interesting and important dialog to have but I’m REALLY REALLY REALLY skeptical of the visual element.

The bleakness, the sex-crazed out of control client, the weak, sad, victimized workers. If you look at the kick starter without reading the text it looks like extreme anti-sex abolitionist propaganda. And I think this project will end up fueling the paternalistic right wing fear mongers. I know the film maker has the best intentions but I sense this could go really wrong really fast. If these bizarre, creepy, overdrawn caricatures came from someone outside the industry the project would be called offensive and hurtful. Just because this project is the brain child of a former sex worker doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility of critical analysis of the subject and larger context. Seriously.

Again, I think there are some interesting ideas here and I’m all for increased visibility and community organizing but frankly the presentation makes my skin crawl.

Ladyface–thanks for letting me know your concerns. I’ll definitely keep your feedback in mind as I edit + in creating the animation for Lola. I will also be showing that each of the women has worked in the industry for several years largely because the tips they’ve earned have opened up possibilities that weren’t there before. But the focus is on the labor conditions.

And just to clear up any misconceptions, I’m not anti-sex industry or trying to shut down the strip clubs. I think strip clubs need to be held to the same labor standards as any other business.

I know many strippers don’t want to be classified as employees, but it’s what they are. I think there’s lots of power in that status that the employers are deliberately down playing so that it looks like a slave situation. The real truth is clubs would have to :
(1) allow dancers to keep 100% of their tips
(2) pay them minimum wages (at least though I think it needs to be waaay more)
(3) they can’t charge you to work. It’s illegal.

Cate–Lola was 16 yrs old when a manager knowingly hired her in spite of her age. She told her to get fake ID + pretend she was 18. I think it’s pretty bold of Lola to come forward about her experience. If her situation seems exploitive, it’s because it is. I stripped alongside several girls who were underaged–I’m sure we all know of 1 or 2 girls like that. It’s no surprise that minors work in the sex industry. Hopefully, Lola’s story will get people thinking about what motivates minors to enter the sex industry + how as an immigrant with little education, it makes her more vulnerable to remaining quiet when there’s workplace violations.

This is really late, but oh well.
I completely agree that she was being exploited, even more so considering that the manager knew of her underage status. I also think that is is not only bold, but absolutely brave for her to share her story.
What is concerning to me is that people are already so quick to conflate voluntary, consensual sex work with the exploitation of minors. Sure there are exploited minors within the sex industry (largely, I think, do to the stigmatized, underground, and sometimes illegal nature of many of the branches but that’s a topic that everyone here seems to know about). That being said, by highlighting an exploited minor in a film about workplace violations, I think you are inviting people to focus not on the unfair work environments of most strip clubs but on the exploitation of said minor.

Having worked very recently in an INCREDIBLY unfairly run strip club, I really love that you’re making this film. I’m just concerned that the inclusion of a trendy issue like an exploited minor could draw attention away from the fact that there are adult women who just really want to strip in a fair environment out there.

I apologize if you cover this in your film or it’s here and I just missed it – but can you walk me through the structure you see as being legal and desirable vis a vis the selling of lapdances? Tips are by nature voluntary (and interestingly in Ontario there is some legislation on the table right now prohibiting restaurants and bars from taking a portion of tips) – I’m wondering where/how a mandatory “charge” comes in? Like what are the customers tipping on?

[…] ‘License to Pimp: A Conversation with Film-maker Hima B‘, also by Rachel Aimee. Hima: “Also, most dancers don’t file complaints while they’re still working, because of the horrible reality that they will get fired. I understand that. My ass got fired from every club I worked at. It’s hard to stand up unless you have some kind of privilege, like you know you could get hired in some other job outside the industry. But we need to get some solidarity on the stage fees. No dancer wants to pay to work, but until every one of those women stands up and says, this is wrong, it’s not going to change.” Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged strippers, union by glasgow sex worker. Bookmark the permalink. […]

[…] The independent contractor vs. employee battle continues to be waged in strip clubs across the country with a Kansas court providing the most recent landmark of ruling that strippers are entitled to unemployment insurance. The strip club will not appeal. […]

[…] to some of the more serious T&S posts: Sex Work and Storytelling at “Sex and Justice”, License to Pimp: A Conversation with Filmmaker Hima B., Stripper Shot At Strip Club Denied Worker’s Comp. If you doubt a sexblog can be deadly earnest, […]

I am woman of color and it has never been an issue for me to make money when I was an entertainer. That point in your article was very offensive. I know many white whores but I never attributed it their race. Maybe you are on to something now that I think about it…

[…] dancer and the director of License to Pimp, a documentary about strippers and labor conditions, reported that clubs just institute new policies to illegally take dancers’ tips, like several clubs in San Francisco using “piece rate” systems and quotas, where […]

A slew of other issues that arise in a club with employee entertainers:

1) How do clubs prevent third-party sexual harassment lawsuits? If a guest says a remark like “you’re sexy” to an entertainer, she could have a claim. Expand on that, and you could have a club with 100 lawsuits a month just from guest harassment. The club would close just for legal fees, especially with litigious professional plaintiffs like yourself.

2) How do clubs make profit? They opened to turn a profit and they exist to turn a profit, but by the time wages, health insurance, ongoing legal fees, and the slew of other expenses are paid, you will have a model where most clubs simply cannot turn a profit. This is especially true for the smaller clubs that already profit little. They will likely close and the very entertainers you are trying to protect will lose the opportunity to make money in their town. The current adult club model is not like a the factories in need of unionization in the 1970’s where greedy owners were profiting hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. Most smaller clubs are lucky to turn a profit of $10-15,000 per month, and diminishing that profit even further would likely lead to their closure.

3) The club could then collect all of the dance fees up-front like in California, use the money to pay an hourly wage to the entertainers, and *maybe* share some of the excess with her as a bonus. This is how clubs that already pay an hourly wage operate, and courts have held it to be correct procedure. Entertainers actually net less money and then have to turn around and pay taxes. If this isn’t the model you propose, what is the model, and is it a model where a club will even be able to afford to stay open?

4) As an employee, entertainers could be forced onto a schedule, have to take direction and instruction from a manager, wear outfits the club wants, etc. There are all employee characteristics with which you can’t argue. Even the most unionized factory workers have a schedule, uniform, and manager whose direction they must follow. Most entertainers don’t want that. Would you? You can’t ask to be an employee and that have all the freedoms afforded to an independent entertainer.

5) What about the clubs that cheat? If a club has employee entertainers, there will likely be some club down the street that goes with the independent model. The entertainers will flock there (whether you want to admit it or not), the guests will follow, and the club trying to operate with employees will fail. Unless you can somehow conjure up a solution in which all clubs operate the same way guaranteed, your “movement” will fail. The government barely has the resources to function now, so don’t expect it to allocate time and money to inspect the labor practices of every strip club everywhere, especially when most of the supposed “victims” aren’t interested or willing to be part of a change to employees.

6) Worse yet, you don’t have a majority of entertainers – or even a quantity greater than maybe a few hundred nationally – who agree with employee status or are even interested in changing the status quo. Most are perfectly happy making somewhere between $400 to $2,000 a night in cash and aren’t willing to join your “movement” to screw that up. You don’t have the support to make anything meaningful happen.

You want freedom and choice. Surely you would espouse this line of logic in any other argument – like abortion, gay marriage, etc. But when it comes to an entertainer selecting her own employment status – legalistic questions aside – you want to force YOUR decision down her throat. Your arrogance precludes you from thinking that other entertainers might be as smart as you and might be able to make decisions on their own.

You want to make the decision for all entertainers everywhere. You are no better or intellectually consistent than the Republicans who want to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.